August and onward.

A one day festival (Behind The Castle) in June. A two day festival (Truck) in July. 
That was just the warm up. In two weeks time I shall be resident in Powys, Wales at Green Man Festival and it will be my first ever visit, which is exciting. Two weeks later comes my annual pilgrimage, since 2009 at least, to End Of The Road (EOTR). There are so many more... this weekend is the 50th Cambridge Folk Festival  and 21-5th August is the 50th Towersey Folk Festival. In an ideal world I would have quite happily gone to all of these and many more too. I have to say that one that has piqued my interest for a couple of years now, although it is in distant south Suffolk, is Maverick Festival. I could list many more that have caught my eye but seven links in the first paragraph is way more than enough. It is time to focus on those that I am going to and what I might wish from them.
It might be leavened with shorter posts on new music.

I'm thinking that this post is something I shall add to over the weekend and it will be thoughts about the acts that I want to see most at Green Man or EOTR and why. Reviews such as this certainly don't hurt. Ezra Furman is playing EOTR. Never seen him live nor heard his music that I am aware of.
I'll tell you one, from EOTR, that is right at the top of my list - Richard Thompson. I don't need to justify that.

In my eight years of festival attendance the changing balance is to be struck between artists that I have heard before and those new to me. As my recent posts concerning Truck 2014 may have made clear, my liking for seeing new artists, or ones that are merely new to me live or otherwise, remains undiminished. There is now a new category too - artists in new acts/guises. Maybe that is where, probably tomorrow, I shall start this discussion. I have two in particular in mind right now and, echoing the recent comments of Robin Seamer at Breaking More Waves, I have also been thinking about those end-of -year lists too. I rather suspect that the début albums by both will feature on mine.
Here is an observation that is just mine: in 2007 I started my end of year reviews with EPs and mini albums because that was easy. The weren't many and fewer still that I felt worthy of mention and I said then that I had felt it was a dying format. I suspect that in fact I had caught it just reviving from its death throes. It is true that much of this has to due with the ascendency of digital music but that is only part of the Lazarus story. Even in 2007 EPs were starting to appear on vinyl, 7", 10" and 12", and the story continues to grow to the present. This is a more recent, but you would not guess it, example of a single:

It was released physically only on cassette tape.

I could tell you about more worthwhile EPs from the first six months of 2014 than from 2007-9 in total. I don't think, for one moment, that this is simply because I am better informed, although I am. It is much more significant than that.

What this post does lack is photographs but that is an interesting demonstration of a cascade of consequence.
When I started to blog a problem soon became apparent - I needed more original stuff to write about. The obvious answer to that was to go to festivals. Festivals are about live music, which is an intrinsically visual medium too, so I needed pictures of what I saw and heard. 

Truck Festival 2014 - a miscellany.

I wasn't intending to blog this evening but so what. I'm still thinking about Truck and in two weeks I shall be off to the orthogonal word of festivals once again, so I had best keep up.
After two posts comprising the goings-on at one small stage, this is going to be a bit different. I did visit the main stage, quite often actually, and the Veterans and Virgins Stage too. I visited the Shed Stage, if only once and briefly.

It is a fairly modern agricultural shed, and it smells the part but has a certain charm I suppose. At times it was, I am told, more crowded than a veal crate, but with willing humans. To the point that security, which generally has very little to do at Truck, had to restrict entry on valid grounds. It would certainly be more atmospheric when it was dark outside.
On the other hand, and on the main stage, I saw two bands that I first saw at End of The Road Festival 2013 (EOTR) on the Thursday on a small stage. I was very impressed then and remain so now. Both are Truck-friendly, guitar-wielding types and they went down very well with a sizeable crowd basking in the scorching sunshine on Friday.

North Wales five-piece Catfish and The Bottlemen, Truck Stage on Friday afternoon.

They nailed this and that will give them much to savour - the début LP 'The Balcony' is released in the UK on September 15 and in North America in early 2015.
A little later, so Friday early evening, came a band well accustomed to playing in such adorable weather - Los Angeles duo Deap Vally.  I purchased the 2013 début LP Sistrionix (on vinyl) after seeing them live at EOTR. This bought back a comment from then, which is that "nobody takes pictures of drummers". This is often because they are hidden right at the back of the stage, I guess.

 Since Julie Edwards was not so hidden, and the light was terrific, here she is.
Whilst I am on the subject of Deap Vally, what the hell?  This is both of them.

A little later that evening I headed, on a strong recommendation and one that proved to be absolutely spot on, to the Veterans and Virgins stage to see an artist that I had never seen before and was only very faintly aware of and quite probably neither are you. Let's put it this way, she is from a musical family.

Mary Epworth.

Her music is percussive and heartfelt, based around anything from UK folk to south-eastern European rhythm via prog and psych rock, including Greek influences; bouzouki infiltrated UK folk from Asia Minor, via Greece, in the 20th century so why not? Her only LP to date is 'Dream Life' (2012).

If that description sounds like a recipe for a train wreck then, given the degree of control exercised here, it is most certainly not. Live however, it is quite the thrilling ride. One of the best acts at Truck Festival 2014.

To summarise the last four posts Truck is a great festival for (especially) new music, is well run, very friendly and remarkably good value for money. This last point applies not just to the tickets but on-site catering and bars. The drinks were marginally cheaper, like for like, than the equivalent in any worthwhile pub in my home town of Frome, Somerset.

And so to finish as I started with another picture of the first act that I saw - Heavy Heart.

In a curious twist of fâte my post today included the début album 'Not Kings' from the first act I saw at Truck Festival 2013, Candy Says, on 180g 12" vinyl. Some things are well worth the wait.

New Music 2014 - Part 15 - Candy Says - Not Kings

Candy Says is the band that opened proceedings at Truck Festival 2013. Regular readers will already know the importance that I attach to seeing support acts and, in particular, festival openers. Here is Candy Says at Truck Festival last July:

Ten months down the line the début album 'Not Kings' is ready for release and, for lovers of pop-chic, here is a selection from it:

'Not Kings' is released on 28 May 2014 and is available in almost any format you could desire, including both vinyl and limited edition cassette tape. 

More from Truck Festival 2013 - Part 1

After a week of cogitation my thoughts about Truck Festival 2013 have started to gel somewhat. Finding myself in The Wheatsheaf, Oxford on Friday evening and listening to one of the acts that I saw at Truck, Swindlestock, helped to further refine that thought process.
Whilst I always try and ensure that I see the support act(s) at a concert I hold even more store in the idea that some of the best discoveries are to be made by catching the opening acts on festival stages. It doesn't matter, in fact it is more revealing, if one has not even heard of the act or artist, let alone in what style they perform!

The band to open Truck Festival 2013, on the Market Stage at noon on Friday, was Candy Says. They describce their music as lo-fi chic pop and I wouldn't argue with that. It reminded me at first of a slightly less numerous ¿Los Campesinos?, which having seen the latter at Deer Shed Festival last summer is certainly no bad thing. The lo-fi ethic extends to their liking for Farfisa electronic organs, releasing their music, physically at least, only on cassette tape and making videos on a Spectrum 64 . Here they are, live at Truck 2013.

Now, as a lover of vinyl, I can't complain of their choice of cassette except to say that, unlike the former, I currently have no reliable means of playing such things! They can be found and streamed/purchased on-line: Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Amazing Tunes and elsewhere.



For my money the song 'Kiss Kill' sums up what they do very well indeed. It certainly served to get the festival off to a fine start as far as I was concerned. First impressions matter; I think part of my enduring love for End of The Road Festival was that the first band I ever saw there, back in 2009, was Canada's Ohbijou, of which I was completely unaware until the moment they appeared on stage.
  
Opening the main stage on Saturday at 12:30 pm was another artist about whom I have to admit I knew very little - Candice Gordon. Here she is performing 'Before The Sunset Ends' last weekend.

This is the title track from her début EP, which was recorded with Pogues front-man Shane MacGowan.
It is of course impossible for one person to see the opening act on every stage at a festival with multiple stages but here is another one that opened the Market Stage at midday on Saturday. Oxford-based six-piece Marvellous Medicine.

Two of the tented stages at Truck were interestingly coloured. This is the Market Stage, the larger of the two, and gives some impression of the ambience that the venue creates. One slightly unusual aspect of reggae and rap infused Marvellous Medicine is that its sole female member is the band's regular drummer. That is except for one song in this set when she handed the sticks to the bassist/rapper Rob Yates and Holly Manners took over lead vocals instead.